Families reduce, reuse, recycle and reteach

Thursday

Apr 23, 2009 at 12:01 AMApr 23, 2009 at 10:19 PM

Years ago, 19 to be exact, people such as Dian White of Rockford were just starting to recycle household waste as part of a nationwide effort to be better stewards of our planet. Today, her generation is still recycling, and their children are following suit.

Corina Curry

Doing their parts to reduce the amount of garbage they generate and recycling what they can is a part of life for many families, but it wasn’t always that way.

Years ago, 19 to be exact, people such as Dian White of Rockford were just starting to recycle household waste as part of a nationwide effort to be better stewards of our planet. Across the county, more people were separating aluminum cans and plastics from garbage, and either setting it out by the curb in recycling bins to be hauled away, or taking recyclables to a drop-off center.

Today, that generation is still recycling, and their children are following suit.

“It’s a habit for me,” said Austin White, Dian’s 23-year-old son. “Growing up, it was just pressed into my mind. This is what you do. You finish the milk. You rinse out the jug, and you put it in the recycling. I don’t know what else to do with it.”

It’s common for parents and children to have great influence on each other when it comes to recycling, said Lori Gummow, executive director of Keep Northern Illinois Beautiful, a nonprofit organization that focuses on education and getting people involved in efforts to improve the region’s environment.

The organization runs a volunteer-supported recycling center in Roscoe. More than 20 tons of recyclable waste is accepted there each month.

Parents often set the example when it comes to recycling, Gummow said, and children tend to become more involved in the process when they grow up and learn about environmental protection, the rain forest and global warming in school.

“Part of the reason why recycling has been such a success with families is because it’s tangible. It’s hard to wrap your arms around saving the rain forest or the planet. But we can put a glass bottle into a bin. We can see how our garbage gets smaller,” Gummow said.

“Recycling is a natural for children because it’s easy. They can participate in it, and they can understand it.”

The Perez family

When Pamela Perez’s 13-year-old daughter Alixandra asked for permission to head down to a nearby creek last week to pick up litter, the 35-year-old mother’s heart filled with pride.

“She must be getting from school or from TV. It’s not from me,” Perez said with a laugh. “She’s the one who’s on me all the time to turn off the lights.”

Although being environmentally conscious always has been a family affair, Perez said she gets more encouragement these days from her 3-year-old son, Zachary Kehoe, and Alixandra.

Zachary “knows ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ from the Bob the Builder cartoon. He goes around saying it all the time. He’s got me saying it,” Perez said. “He even knows that we shouldn’t leave the water running when we brush our teeth. If I ever leave it on, he scolds me.”

Alixandra, a Lincoln Middle School seventh-grader, picked up litter along the creek by her house last year for Earth Day and did it again this year with her little brother.

“I tell him we have to pick up the plastic because it’s good for the earth,” she said. “I don’t like how people treat the earth.”

Perez said she and her fiance and two kids are regular plastic and aluminum can recyclers at home. They’ll use plastic bags over and over again. They use them for lunches, to carry workout clothes to the gym and even take bags back to the store for new groceries.

“If we reuse and recycle five bags, that’s five less bags in the landfill,” she said. “We figure if we do our little part and everyone does their little part, it makes a difference.”

The family recycles paper and plastic using the city’s program, and takes aluminum cans and other metal products to a recycling center.

Perez sees environmental awareness growing by leaps and bounds as each new generation learns more and brings it home.

“I think a lot of it has to do with what kids are learning in school,” Perez said. “They’re learning about Earth Day and recycling. Then they come home and share that enthusiasm with their parents.”

The Martinez family

Mercedes Martinez says recycling just makes sense.

The 18-year-old senior at Jefferson High School grew up recycling household items such as plastic bottles and metal cans.

“It’s something we’ve always done,” Martinez said. “We have the bin on the back porch and anything that can be recycled goes in there rather than the trash.”

The Martinez family also recently switched to using energy-efficient light bulbs, she said, and they reuse plastic bags whenever they can before recycling them.

Mom, Linda Martinez, said the family’s recycling efforts started with her kids two decades ago, but now she’s the vigilant one.

“They know it’s a big no-no if I find the plastic in the garbage,” Linda Martinez said. “I’ll say, ‘Just because you didn’t want to walk to the back door and put this in the recycling bin, doesn’t mean it belongs in the garbage.’ ”

Participating in the city’s curbside recycling program is easy, the 46-year-old mother of five said.

“We all know it’s important to do our small part,” Martinez said. “And it’s not hard,”

The White family

When Dian White’s boys were 2 and 4 years old, the Rockford wife and mother was the family’s primary recycler.

Today, she still is. She knows her sons, now 21 and 23, recycle some household plastics and metals. Not as much as she does, but she’s happy with their efforts.

“They didn’t pick it up as much as I would have liked, but they do some,” said White, 53. “When I go and visit them and I’ll take things off the counter and bring them home and recycle them.”

Nearly 20 years ago, White started a mini-recycling center in her garage with boxes designated for papers, plastic and aluminum cans. It’s still there. And White still uses it as much as ever.

Her oldest son, Austin, who lives next door to his parents, also uses it.

“We’re in the county so we don’t have recycling pickup,” Dian White said. “We load up the car once a week and go to the Keep Northern Illinois Beautiful center.”

The tax-preparer and financial consultant said her commitment to recycling comes from her love of nature.

“For the majority of our lives, we seldom have had more than a bag of garbage a week,” White said. “I’m always amazed when I see one or two people have three or four things of garbage out there. ... When you see things littered and things tossed on the street, when you see people taking something God has made so perfectly and destroying it, it’s kind of sad.”

Corina Curry can be reached at ccurry@rrstar.com or (815) 987-1371.

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